Droplets from the Inkwell

Writing Ideas within the World of Magisters

Spoiler Alert: This post deals with the world created by C.S. Friedman for her books in her Magister Trilogy  . I will be discussing some of the plot elements and themes in the series. If you have not finished the series yet (What are you waiting for?), you might want to put off reading this until you're done.

Earlier this weekend, I wrote a post   at my everything blog   in which I took C.S. Friedman   to task over self-righteously (in my opinion" claiming she "didn't get" why anyone would be into slash-fiction. As a part of that post, I gave a few examples of why I think her own Magister Trilogy   practically begs to the be target of slash fiction writers. I also admit that I'm tempted to pick up my own pen and write a few stories of my own.

This bog post is my chance to continue exploring that temptation.

To be honest, I'm not interested in writing slash fiction (or fan fiction) in the purest sense. I have no desire to create a story in which Colivar and Ramirus get freaky or in which Kamala seduces Gwynofar. Those are well defined characters, and I have no desire to warp them into something of my own creation. Nor do I want to try to get inside those character's heads and try to write stories about them that fits in with their characters. To be frank, I love character building and therefore would much rather start with blank slates for characters that I can imagine and build up from nothingness.

However, playing in Friedman's world is another story. Exploring an entire species of creatures, the humans that bonds with them, and the humans with hybrid souls through new characters could be fun. I just have to decide what characters and scenarios I want to explore.

One of the ideas that I have going through my head is to explore what it would be like for a gay man to bond with an ikati, and how he might be affected -- or the ikati might be affected by his gay consort -- during a queen's mating flight. Would the original bonding be possible? (I could have my gay character bond with a queen instead, but that just seems too cliche and stereotypical.) If the gay man's consort won the right to mate with the queen, would the human's gayness interfere with the mating because of their shared soul?

And what if an ikati were gay? What if a male ikati joined the mating flight, only to realize he's far more interested in one of his would-be rivals rather than the queen? In a species where dominance, violence, and sex are powerfully intertwined, how would sexual desire between two males of the species eventually manifest itself? Would a gay ikati be driven from the colony? What would this mean for his human consort.

What if gay people simply cannot bond with ikati? Does this suggest that a gay person might be immune to the effects of the species (the mesmerizing power, the ability for a queen to make herself invisible, etc?) in general? I could create a morati character to explore those possibilities.

And of course, I can also explore the possibility of a gay Magister. Even if gay people cannot bond directly with ikati, perhaps they can bond with the remnants of the ikati soul Colivar shared with his fellow Magisters. I could explore why the two scenarios are different. And then, of course, I could explore what it would be like to be a gay man among the Magisters. And this is something I could explore both before and after the Magisters have learned about their true nature.

There are so many possible avenues of exploration, I don't even know where it would be best to start.

JarredH

Our tears remind us that we are alive. Our laughter reminds us why.